Process for manufacturing needlepoint canvas

ABSTRACT

A process for manufacturing needlepoint canvas by utilizing high speed printing equipment comprising placing an air impervious backing on selective parts of the canvas so that the canvas sheets can be fed at high speeds by a vacuum sucker-type feeding arrangement, and then applying a coating which makes the surface of the canvas receptive to colored inks or paints used in the printing process. For example, clear printing ink or over-print varnish is printed on the canvas to prevent sizing in the canvas from injuring the printing plates during printing. Then the needlepoint canvas has the color design applied thereon utilizing lithographic, letter press or rubber plate equipment. After printing, the air impervious backing sheet or strip is removed and the canvas is trimmed to the desired size.

United States Patent 1191 Devries June 25, 1974 1 PROCESS FOR MANUFACTURING 2,369,290 2/1945 Foard 101/115 NEEDLEPOINT CANVAS 2,810,673 10/1957 Lutje 161/97 3,582,440 6/1971 Kukoff 117/38 Inventor: Roy F. Devries, Saddlebrook, NJ.

DeVries Brothers, Inc., Saddlebrook, NJ.

Filed: July 13, 1972 Appl. No.: 271,416

Assignee:

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 8/1934 Mian 161/138 Primary Examiner-Charles E. Van Horn Assistant Examiner-Caleb Weston [5 7] ABSTRACT A process for manufacturing needlepoint canvas by utilizing high speed printing equipment comprising placing an air impervious backing on selective parts of the canvas so that the canvas sheets can be fed at high speeds by a vacuum sucker-type feeding arrangement, and then applying a coating which makes the surface of the canvas receptive to colored inks or paints used in the printing process. For example, clear printing ink or over-print varnish is printed on the canvas to prevent sizing in the canvas from injuring the printing plates during printing. Then the needlepoint canvas has the color design applied thereon utilizing lithographic, letter press or rubber plate equipment. After printing, the air impervious backing sheet or strip is removed and the canvas is trimmed to the desired size.

8 Claims, 3 Drawing Figures PROCESS FOR MANUFACTURING NEEDLEPOINT CANVAS BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In the past, needlepoint kits have been used for pleasure and enjoyment to produce beautiful wall hangings, pillows, and other decorative items. Such needlepoint kits were made of a canvas, loosely wooven, with the area of the interstices being greater than the actual area of the warp and weft threads of the woven material. The needlepoint canvas had, a multicolor pattern ei ther hand painted or screen printed thereon. The user would then match yarn colors to the colors printed on the canvas and then needlepoint, in yarn, the printed pattern.

As needlepoint kits become more popular, it became necessary to increase production of the canvases and the cost of screen printing the patterns became an economic bottleneck. That is, obviously hand painting patterns on needlepoint canvas was an extremely slow and costly method of producing in any great quantity these canvases and, therefore, for high production needs this was not a desirable alternative. Additionally, screen printing was limited in that production speeds were at the limit of screen printing, namely, approximately 400 to 500 sheets an hour. Further, the cost of making the screens was also quite high. Accordingly, since screen printing is the method most commonly used for printing patterns on the canvases, the actual cost of canvases was high.

It was not thought possible to utilize high speed lithographic, letterpress, or rubber plate equipment to produce the patterns as the canvas was not feedable into these high speed machines. That is, because of the extremely porous nature of a canvas wherein the interstices comprise a greater area than the actual warp and weft of the threads woven material, neither mechanical picker-feeders, nor vacuum sucker feeders could feed this material at the speeds required into the high speed printing equipment. Further, the canvas itself was highly sized and, when printed upon, the starch had a tendency to be forced out of the canvas material on to the printing plates thus fouling the plates of the printing equipment. Thus only the first few printed sheets would actually be clearly printed and, thereafter, the starch and other materials in the canvas would act deleteriously upon the printing plates preventing clear reproduction onto the canvas. For all these reasons, it was thought not possible to utilize this equipment and screen printing has been the order of the day for producing patterns on needlepoint canvas.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a process for printing on needlepoint canvas utilizing a high speed printing technique in which a roll of needlepoint canvas has applied to the back thereof either spots of impervious sheets. Then, a stack of cut sheets, with the impervious backers, is placed in a feed tray for feeding to the high speed printing equipment. The vacuum grippers can easily feed one sheet at a time because the vacuum is achieved through the proper positioning of the air impervious backing material. The first printing in the machine is accomplished by coating or printing with clear printing ink or overprint varnish a clear coating on the canvas which prevents any of the starches in the canvas from coming off the fibers of the canvas so as to injure the printing plates. After this coating is placed on the sheets, the printing process is completed, conventionally, using a lithographic, letterpress, or rubber plate equipment. It can be understood, that utilizing standard halftone lithographic techniques, it would be possible to obtain a complete spectrum of colors for printing the patterns on the canvas. After the sheets come out of the printing machine, the backing sheet is removed. For example, if the backing sheet were masking tape, it would be merely stripped off. It has been found that this technique provides color patterns as perfect and even better than that achieved through screen printing.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic showing of one means of applying the backing material to the needlepoint canvas utilized in the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a drawing of a cut sheet of needlepoint canvas having spot pieces of air impervious material secured to the back surface thereof.

FIG. 3 is a showing of a sheet of needlepoint canvas in accordance with the principles of the present invention in which a full sheet of air impervious material has been secured to the back surface thereof.

In FIG. I, there is shown a roll 10 of needlepoint canvas on which is to be printed the pattern to be used in the needlepoint kit. The needlepoint canvas 10 can be one of many types, all of which have wide interstices formed by the warp and weft threads of the woven material, which interspaces are normally greater in area than the actual woven threads of the canvas. The canvas roll 10 is fed, in a conventional manner, over a roller 12 to be sliced into proper size by a cutting blade 14 mounted above a suitable support table 16 to form the cut sheets 18 shown in FIG. 1. Additionally, a pair of rolls 25 and 22 of masking tape are positioned on a common shaft to supply masking tape strips 24 and 26 respectively to theback surface of the canvas 28 through pinch rolls 30 and 32, which force the masking tape into predetermined spaced parallel positions on the back surface of the canvas 28. Thus the finished cut sheet 18 will have strips 24 and 26 on the undersurface thereof.

Other means of placing air impervious areas on the back surface of the sheet 18 can be achieved, for example, as shown in FIG. 2, a sheet 34 is shown with two spots 36 and 38 of air impervious material such as polyethylene, Mylar, or other material adhesively secured to the back surface of the sheet 34. A further method, as shown in FIG. 3, would be to provide a sheet 40 of needlepoint canvas whose back surface is entirely coated with Mylar sheet 42. The sheets 18, 34 or 40 are stacked, and supplied to a conventional feed mechanism or printing press. In such an apparatus, vacuum grippers are used to pick the top sheet from a pile and feed it into the printing press. Utilizing conventional needlepoint canvas, it would be impossible to utilize vacuum grippers to pick up the top sheet because of the wide interstices in the needlepoint canvas. By utilizing air impervious strips 20 and 24 on sheet 18, spots 36 and 38 on sheet 34, or backing sheet 42 on sheet 40,

it is possible to have the conventional feed mechanism of a high speed printing press pick up the sheets and feed them into the conventional printing machine. By high speed printing equipment, the present invention contemplates lithographic, letterpress, or rubber plate equipment. High speed printing equipment excludes, from its definition, screen printing or other slower processes.

In order for the sized needlepoint canvas to be utilized in a high speed printing equipment, there must be means of preventing the sizing, after interaction with the printing ink, from fouling the printing plates of the printing equipment. Accordingly, the needlepoint canvas must be coated or otherwise treated to prevent the sizing materials from coming through onto the printing plates during the printing process. This can be accomplished in two ways. First, the canvas could be treated prior to printing at the factory or secondly, the canvas could be treated in the first step in the printing process. Since the printing machine is capable of printing a clear printing ink or overprint varnish on the needlepoint canvas in the first step as it passes through the printing machine, there is little need for buying specially treated canvas. The overprint varnish prevents the sizing from coming through when the colored inks are impressed on the canvas and, since this overprint varnish is clear, it in no way affects the quality of the resultant product.

Thus, it was decidedly advantageous in producingcomplex patterns to utilize halftone techniques on needlepoint canvas which had not been achievable prior to the present invention.

Although this invention has been described with respect to its preferred embodiments, it should be understood that many variations and modifications will now be obvious to those skilled in the art, and it is preferred, therefore, that the scope of the invention be limited, not by the specific disclosure herein, only by the appended claims.

I claim as my invention:

1. A process of printing color patterns on needlepoint canvas comprising the steps of:

a. providing sheets of needlepoint canvas,

b. coating the surface of the needlepoint canvas with a coating to prevent materials in the canvas from injuring the plates of the printing machine;

c. applying an air impervious backing sheet on at least a portion of said needlepoint canvas,

d. feeding stacked sheets, one by one, by vacuum gripping means to a high speed printing machine with the vacuum gripping taking place at the point on the canvas wherein the backing has been added to the back surface of the needlepoint canvas, and

e. high speed printing a pattern on said needlepoint canvas on the coated surface thereof.

2. The process of claim 1 wherein said step of applying an air impervious backing includes applying at least one strip of air impervious adhesive tape along the back surface of the canvas.

3. A process in accordance with claim 1 wherein said step of applying a backing sheet on said canvas includes placing a sheet of film across the entire back surface of the needlepoint canvas.

4. The process of claim 1 wherein said step of applying a sheet of backing material includes placing at least one spot of air impervious backing material adhesively secured to the back surface of the needlepoint canvas sheet.

5. The process of claim 1 including the step of stripping said backing sheet from said needlepoint canvas sheet after completion of the printing step.

6. A method of printing on needlepoint canvas sheets comprising the steps of:

a. providing sheets of needlepoint canvas,

b. applying air impervious backing means to at least portions of the back surface of said needlepoint canvas,

c. feeding said needlepoint canvas to a high speed printing machine utilizing vacuum gripping means associated with the portions of said needlepoint canvas sheets having the backing thereon, and

d. high speed printing on said needlepoint canvas sheet.

7.'The process of claim 6 including the step of removing said backing means from said sheet after completion of said high speed printing step.

8. A process in accordance with claim 6 wherein said step of high speed printing includes printing colors in halftone on high speed printing equipment. 

1. A process of printing color patterns on needlepoint canvas comprising the steps of: a. providing sheets of needlepoint canvas, b. coating the surface of the needlepoint canvas with a coating to prevent materials in the canvas from injuring the plates of the printing machine; c. applying an air impervious backing sheet on at least a portion of said needlepoint canvas, d. feeding stacked sheets, one by one, by vacuum gripping means to a high speed printing machine with the vacuum gripping taking place at the point on the canvas wherein the backing has been added to the back surface of the needlepoint canvas, and e. high speed printing a pattern on said needlepoint canvas on the coated surface thereof.
 2. The process of claim 1 wherein said step of applying an air impervious backing includes applying at least one strip of air impervious adhesive tape along the back surface of the canvas.
 3. A process in accordance with claim 1 wherein said step of applying a backing sheet on said canvas includes placing a sheet of film across the entire back surface of the needlepoint canvas.
 4. The process of claim 1 wherein said step of applying a sheet of backing material includes Placing at least one spot of air impervious backing material adhesively secured to the back surface of the needlepoint canvas sheet.
 5. The process of claim 1 including the step of stripping said backing sheet from said needlepoint canvas sheet after completion of the printing step.
 6. A method of printing on needlepoint canvas sheets comprising the steps of: a. providing sheets of needlepoint canvas, b. applying air impervious backing means to at least portions of the back surface of said needlepoint canvas, c. feeding said needlepoint canvas to a high speed printing machine utilizing vacuum gripping means associated with the portions of said needlepoint canvas sheets having the backing thereon, and d. high speed printing on said needlepoint canvas sheet.
 7. The process of claim 6 including the step of removing said backing means from said sheet after completion of said high speed printing step.
 8. A process in accordance with claim 6 wherein said step of high speed printing includes printing colors in halftone on high speed printing equipment. 